HOUSE BUYING: The Beginning

"Front Door Flowers" by LongitudeLatitude is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Growing up, at least during my university years I had my heart set on buying a little terraced house that lined the streets of Newcastle. It'd be filled with period features - everything from the original brass door knobs, cast iron fireplaces to grand old staircases, much like the house I lived in for three years in Heaton (but it would be warmer and not have mold on the walls or be filled with students that didn't clean up). With a bright red wooden door, a terraced house in Newcastle would be home. 

It's funny how life turns out.

There aren't too many terraced houses in these parts of the Mid West and wooden doors seem very few and far between. American streets of Metro Detroit are predominately filled with detached homes with porches to the infamous post box by the curb side with retro bars in the basement. Streets are tree lined (so many trees) and you'll even come across a dirt track or two. A year ago we started properly saving, working on our credit to buy our first very house, a small piece of America, now we're ready to buy.

So this post marks the start of a new adventure - one I hope to share on my blog in a mini series across the forthcoming weeks and months covering everything from mortgage pre approval, mistakes first time buyers make to home buyers classes and the like. An increasing pet hate is coming across blog posts that claim buying a house is easy - and while I hope my posts don't scare people, I do want them to reflect the experiences and advice we've come across. We're doing all this by ourselves (literally and financially), we're learning as we do this. Hopefully this series will provide a realistic glimpse at house buying and whether your in the UK or the US I'm sure many of the tips are international and helpful. Granted we are buying in the US market  and we are really lucky to be able to apply for a particular government loan (which requires only a 1% down payment - more of this to come) and while yes we live just outside bankrupt Detroit, we actually live in one of the richest county's in the US.

Luckily me and Joe are on the same page with what we want out of a house - while we're approved for a lot higher, we're trying to stick well under the $70k max (yes you can buy a house that cheaply here) aside from being in the couple of cities we have our eyes on, they basically boil down to;

• 3 bedrooms (one to be converted into my office come store space/craft room)
• A basement 
• Decent sized garden (pretty much standard in these parts)
• At least 1000 square feet (that might sound small but basements without full windows and attic space which is often a room rather than an attic in the English sense of a home generally aren't included in the space measurements). 

Yeah we're that easily pleased. It'll be interesting how this list relates to what we finally buy.

Seeing as we're all mortgage approved and the house viewing is beginning this weekend I thought it would be high time I actually blogged about it (I always thought it was tempting fate too much to talk and share prior to having things sorted - trust me we've been working on this for over a year).

So first things first, what kind house would you be after? What would be on your must have house list? Did you ever imagine where and how your first house would be growing up?